An Analysis of the Social Basis of the Soviet Union

— and why we defend it

The Russo-German war is now
entering its second month, and this gives us the opportunity to measure
the relation of forces. It is clear that the heroic resistance of the
workers and peasants has for the first time stemmed the blows of the
German blitzkrieg machine. The bitter resistance of Soviet soldiers
has completely upset the Nazi time-table. Already the German soldiery
have had to pay the price for their territorial gains in such measure
that the soviet claim to have inflicted a million casualties on the
German army cannot be far short of the mark.

In addition to this the “scorched
earth” policy announced by Stalin completely deprives the Nazis
of any immediate economic gains in the territory occupied by their troops.
They conquer only blackened ruins and desolation. Banking on the experience
of the campaigns in the West, Hitler had anticipated a relatively cheap
and easy victory. Moreover the experience of the Finnish war which had
been decidedly unpopular among the masses of the Russian people had
led the German imperialists to completely underestimate the powers of
resistance of the masses when defending themselves against imperialist
attack. Napoleon, whom Hitler has desired to render a tyro in the field
of world conquest, could have explained in advance to his would-be imitator
that the moral factor stands as to the physical in the relation of three
to one.

Basing themselves on the oppression
of the Russian workers and peasants by the uncontrolled bureaucracy,
the German capitalists, and for that matter world imperialism, deluded
themselves into the belief that the Russian People could be overwhelmed
without too costly an effort. Trotsky had predicted that the idea of
the Japanese militarists and German Fascists, that the Russian people
were only waiting for the armies of the Mikado and Hitler to “liberate”
them, was fantastic delirium. The capitulations of Stalin in the past
two years encouraged this belief in the minds of the German military
clique. In spite of the ravages of the bureaucracy, the basic conquests
of the October Revolution still remain: the capitalist class has never
regained its possessions and private ownership in the means of production
has never been restored. It is this that the masses, despite their aversion
for the bureaucracy, have rallied to defend, just as the British workers
would rally to the defence of their Trade Unions against capitalist
attack, in spite of their aversion for the Bevins and Citrines.

Up to now the Nazi army has
not had a serious test to face. In France the bourgeoisie were concerned
only with saving their property, and the moment the Germans had broken
through, they capitulated. The French soldiers and workers had been
demoralised by the Stalinists and the actions of the bourgeoisie, and
rendered morally prostrate, which resulted in only half-hearted resistance.
Likewise in the other countries the bourgeoisie sold out, and the German
military machine marched over Europe as if on military manoeuvres. It
was this which gave the Nazis the illusion of invincibility.

But today Goebbels is forced
to admit that the Russian soldier fights to the death. “When the
machine guns are knocked out by tanks, the Mongol soldier does not surrender;
he fights on with a revolver.” And behind the German lines of advance
the population remains bitterly hostile, and conducts guerrilla warfare.
It is this wave of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice that has served to
stem the German advance. And with a correct policy would guarantee the
victory of the Russian workers and peasants over the Nazi military machine
and the establishment of a Socialist Europe. But as was foreseen, Stalin
cannot wage a revolutionary war.

The bureaucracy in Russia is
fighting Hitler because he leaves them no alternative, and thus, they
do, in a distorted bureaucratic fashion defend the Soviet Union. The
Soviet bureaucracy—the army officers, managers, technicians, artists
and higher officials, numbering about 10,000,000, intend to continue
to devour four-fifths of the goods produced for consumption, while the
rest of the population consume one-fifth, and this is what they are
fighting for. But in spite of the fact that Stalin desires the defeat
of Hitler, he does not wish for a proletarian revolution in Germany,
because a Socialist revolution in Germany would mean a Socialist Europe.
And a Socialist Europe would mean that the victorious Russian workers
and peasants, imbued with self-confidence by their victory, would return
home and soon settle accounts with the Kremlin usurpers by immediately
restoring control into their own hands. Stalinism only came to power
on the basis of the defeats of the world working-class. A victory of
such titanic proportions as the seizure of power by the German proletariat
would sweep Stalinism aside!

The organic needs of the bureaucracy
in internal policy find expression in the foreign policy of Stalin.
If they had placed their confidence in the European and world working-class,
by consistent day in and day out leaflets and radio appeals to the German
workers, explaining the real character of the war on the part of their
Nazi rulers, urging them in fraternal collaboration to establish a Socialist
Germany—this, coupled with the unyielding resistance of the Russian
workers and peasants, would have been the signal for transforming the
whole world situation and would have sounded the death knell of world
capitalism. Instead of this irrefutable Leninist position, we see the
reliance upon Churchill and Roosevelt, the “democratic” imperialists.
Not only is the Comintern deceiving the Russian masses as to the nature
of the voracious imperialists of Britain and America, but is spreading
the illusion among the entire world working-class that they are fighting
for the liberty of all nations. On the Moscow wireless we hear:

“When the German fascist
hordes appeared on the shores on the Straits of Dover and the English
Channel, and prematurely celebrated their victory over democratic Britain,
the British showed in the moment of mortal danger that they were capable,
under the leadership of their far-sighted statesmen, of developing the
gigantic strength latent within them.”

In the Times of July
17th we read:

“As happened during
the lesser crises of recent years, resolutions have come pouring into
Moscow from factories and farms throughout the Union. A word from Moscow
can usually bring such resolutions at any time. In the past they have
not been wholly spontaneous: but their wording is now significant. The
Anglo-Soviet Alliance is applauded not merely in the Moscow newspapers;
it is being welcomed and praised in all these resolutions, proof that
the Soviet Government is not afraid of letting even the most isolated
centres know that it has joined forces with the Power which until lately
was denounced as imperialist and capitalist.”

And we are told by Stalin in
his speech:

“In this connection
the historic utterances of the British Prime Minister, Churchill, regarding
aid to the Soviet Union, and the declaration of the United States Government,
signifies readiness to render aid to our country, which can only evoke
a feeling of gratitude in the hearts of the peoples of the Soviet Union,
are fully comprehensible and symptomatic.”

Thus we see the deliberate
deception of the masses in the Soviet Union as to the real aims of Anglo-American
imperialism, the aims of world domination for the continued exploitation
of the people of the entire globe and, above all as a long-term perspective,
the re-introduction of capitalism in the Soviet Union.

On the other hand, Churchill
and the bourgeois statesmen have openly proclaimed their detestation
of Communism and by innuendo have made it clear to the class they represent
that they intend to settle this account at a more propitious time. Mr.
Churchill does not withdraw a word of what he has said about Communism
in the past. And Churchill has expressed his preference for Hitler’s
Nazism to Bolshevism. The support which Churchill will give is based
only on the knowledge of the world bourgeoisie on the counter-revolutionary
role of Stalinism, which the nationalist charlatanism emanating from
Moscow has wholly justified. Were it not for this, Churchill would be
clutching at Hitler as a saviour from the menace of Bolshevism.

Confident of the role of the
Stalinist bureaucracy within and without Russia, Churchill and Roosevelt
are calculating on the mutual exhaustion of Germany and Russia. As a
Turkish journalist expressed it: “Wouldn’t it be fine if Hitler
and Stalin would knock each other out?” Anglo-American imperialism
will then be enabled to destroy the Soviet regime and emerge masters
of the world. The resistance of Russia has been as much of a surprise
to them as to Germany. A protracted resistance and its inevitable threat
of revolution in Europe would compel Hitler to seek terms at the expense
of Russia, and Hitler would be compelled to play the role originally
allotted him by world finance.

The internal development of the Soviet Union

But what will take place within
Soviet Society? To save himself Stalin must appeal to the revolutionary
energies of the masses and arm once again tens of millions of workers
and peasants. Not for long will these masses be fobbed off by the crimes
and stupidities of the bureaucracy. The baneful effects of mismanagement,
inefficiency, and corruption which are characteristic of the ignorant
and uncontrolled bureaucracy will be even more glaring under the stress
of the war. Meanwhile, war will impose a terrible strain on the industry
and transport of the Soviet Union, and the privations of the masses
will inevitably become worsened, in the interests of “Everything
for the Front.” This policy can only be carried through without
provoking sharp legitimate dissatisfaction, if, as was the case in Lenin’s
day, the sacrifices are more or less spread equally over the entire
population.

In the course of the war the
wasteful extravagance and corruption of the generals, admirals and other
high bureaucrats will arouse extreme resentment and hostility among
the masses. This is the reason for the unparalleled chauvinist appeals
on the basis of “national unity.” Lenin taught us always to
look beneath formulae and slogans for the social content. In
capitalist states the appeal for “national unity”, “union
sacrée”, in time of war, is a cloak to gloss over the antagonism
of interests in the given society. Of course, in Russia today it is
correct to appeal for the defence of the fatherland—but in Lenin’s
day the emphasis, as always, would be the workers’ fatherland. The defence
of the Russian workers’ state would be the defence of the entire world
working-class, especially of the workers in Europe and Germany!

Under the fire of British guns
in the wars of intervention, both in the internal and external propaganda,
the Bolsheviks appealed to the Russian soldiers fighting against the
British: “We never forget while English guns and English bombs
and English soldiers are raining death upon us that there are two Englands,
the England of the workers, and the England of finance capitalists.”
The reason why the Soviet bureaucracy cannot make this simple and true
call, internally and externally, is because of the profound gulf which
has opened out between the people and the avaricious officialdom. This
is the social content of the appeal for “national unity” within
the Soviet Union

If, as we hope, the Nazis fail
to score a decisive success—which is the best that can be hoped for
with Stalinism in control, the war will become a bloody war of attrition
and exhaustion, and the contradictions within Soviet society will reach
their extreme limit, beyond which there must be an explosion.

Like all doomed regimes, Stalin’s
preoccupation with preserving his position is shown by the measures
which he has dictated for the army. The splitting of the front into
three commands is not dictated by the military needs of the Soviet Union.
In war a unified command is obviously the best means of conducting operations
on the fronts as a planned whole. Stalin’s reduction of Timoshenko from
Commander-in-Chief is dictated by fear that the reins of power will
slip out of the hands of the civil bureaucracy into the hands of the
army caste. After the Finnish war the abolition of the control of the
political commissars, which were in reality the G.P.U. guards of the civil
bureaucracy, was a victory for the army caste. Stalin was compelled,
by the disastrous consequences of the G.P.U. control and purges which led
to military reverses, to give a freer hand to the generals. But now
fearful of his position, even in the face of the mightiest foe in world
history, Stalin once again has introduced the G.P.U. in order to ensure
his control, from below as well as above, in the army. But in any event,
this will not prevent at a later stage power passing into the hands
of the military bureaucracy as in all Bonapartist regimes.

In industry and transport,
through the disruption of economy, the heads of the trust will be compelled
more and more to act as if they were the owners of the enterprises.
Planned economy, which pre-supposes the conscious co-operation, activity,
and control by the masses, managed in spite of the bureaucratic straight-jacket,
to maintain a semblance of unified progress in time of peace. In time
of war, the bureaucratic strangulation means that planned economy as
a whole must crumble. The “Fifteen Year Plan” of 1941 is automatically
scrapped. Under the aggravation of these contradictions, the processes
speeded up by the war, a section of the bureaucratic tops will tend
to seek the assistance of the capitalist “allies” to solve
the contradictions by the restoration of capitalism.

On the other hand the workers
and peasants who bear the main brunt of the war will now be armed and
organised (it is true under the control of the G.P.U.), and while they
have tolerated in the past the Old Man of the Sea on their backs for
fear of a worse alternative in the form of capitalist intervention,
they will not look with any too indulgent an eye on the excesses and
inefficiencies of the bureaucracy. As time passes it will become more
and more evident that the bureaucratic control is paralysing the organisation
of the defence of the Soviet Union. It will become apparent that only
restoration of workers’ control in the factories, the restoration of
Soviets and Soviet democracy can save the workers’ state from disaster.
At that time the programme of Lenin and Trotsky will be rejuvenated.

The utopian character of the
dream of “Socialism in One Country” has been destroyed, in
passing, by the Nazi attack. Whatever the outcome of the struggle it
is obvious that the economy of the Soviet Union will be terribly shattered
and weakened. The policy of “scorched earth,” with a revolutionary
perspective, is, of course, the only correct one. Nevertheless it is
a policy of desperation. Tens of millions of people will flee to the
interior of the Soviet Union and the devastated regions will require
years to build up again. Even a victory would find Soviet economy more
and more dependent upon the rich and mighty “Democracies”
of the West.

Even under Czarism the bourgeois
democracies bled Russia white in man power and economically. In the
salons of St. Petersburg the bourgeois joked that “England is prepared
to fight to the last drop of blood of the Russian soldier.” At
that period, while fighting German imperialism in alliance with Russia,
the allied bourgeoisie were not loath to try and transform Russia into
an Anglo-French colony. This at a time when they were propping up Russian
Czarism as a bulwark of European reaction. Today it is clear that Washington
and London regard the attack of Hitler as a gift of Providence to simultaneously
bleed their mighty German rival and at the same time obtain an advantageous
position for the throttling of the workers’ state. The antagonisms between
collective ownership in Russia and the capitalist world is the most
fundamental of all antagonisms within present-day society.

That is why, in spite of all
the concessions and cringing of the bureaucracy, the Soviet regime,
even in its emasculated form, cannot be saved unless the intervention
of the workers in the capitalist states takes place. If world capitalism
manages to survive the present bloody conflagration it has let loose
on mankind, regardless of the victors, Russia will not escape the engulfment
like the rest of the world, of fascist barbarism, and the bourgeois
counter-revolution in Russia will be heralded.

The end of the Comintern as an international

This austere, but sober, calculation
of the development of events plays its part with the Churchills and
Roosevelts. Stalin is assisting them with all his might to transform
their calculations into reality. The prostituted Comintern, from being
sold together with oil and manganese to placate Hitler, is now bartered
for Promises of machine tools and Spitfires. Not only in the allied
countries, but in the occupied territories too, the Comintern is dancing
to the tune of Churchill. In France and Czechoslovakia, where the Communist
Parties probably have the support of the majority of the working-class,
they are now placing their followers under the banner of De Gaulle and
Benes, who represent London, and nothing else.

But the calculations of world
imperialism are built on quicksand. In Germany and Europe, far more
than in the Soviet Union itself, the contradictions between the Nazi
bureaucracy and the German imperialists on the one side, and the German
workers and peasants on the other, and the contradiction between German
imperialism and the oppressed workers and peasants of the conquered
nations, are being strained to breaking point. The development of the
war will bring all five continents into the harvest of “blood,
toil, tears and sweat” which capitalism has sown. The violent reaction
of the masses to this bloody and senseless slaughter will come with
absolute certainty. And on this optimistic perspective the Trotskyists
base their programme.

In Britain the bourgeoisie
is chuckling at the exorcising of the “red menace” by the
betrayal of the Communist Party. The Times notes with satisfaction
that Hitler’s move into Russia has “placed the dissident Communist
minority behind the national effort.” This, it is to be hoped,
will be the final turn of the already dizzy Comintern. The revolutionary
element within the Communist Party will not for long allow themselves
to be dragooned into support for Churchill. Perhaps it has been fortunate
that the Comintern has not managed to penetrate and corrupt the decisive
section of the British working-class. In Europe the lash of fascism
is the price which the working-class has paid for the crimes of Social
Democracy and Stalinism. But we in Britain have the opportunity to profit
from the lessons of the past decades. The British working-class can
play a decisive role in the destruction of the European reaction and
salvage and regenerate what remains of the October Resolution, but only
by waging an ever more implacable and irreconcilable struggle against
the government of finance capital. The programme of the Fourth International
alone advocates such a path and the revolutionary elements of the Communist
Party, who are already voting with their feet, must be drawn to our
banner.

The fate of the workers of
Europe and the world has been tied in one knot by the imperialist war.
Either a socialist Britain and a Socialist Europe, or a Fascist Britain
and Europe and the destruction of the U.S.S.R. as a workers’ state.